1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of portable DTMF telephone number dialer devices and, more particularly, is concerned with an object-oriented programmable dedicated dialer device and method of programming and calibrating the device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is a very common practice for companies to give specialty manufactured gifts to customers and prospective customers in an effort to generate more business. These gifts are generally inexpensive items that have been customized to carry company logos, addresses, telephone numbers and similar materials.
An entire industry has developed to manufacture these "give-away" items. This industry is known generally as the specialty advertising industry. The variety of ornamental and functional gift items manufactured in this industry include business cards, pencils, calendars, clocks, and calculators. One very important goal of the specialty advertising industry is to make a company's phone number easily accessible to potential customers.
The use of dial tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals for dialing telephone numbers is well-known in the art and has been in use since the 1950s. Many prior art DTMF dialer devices exist which enable a user to dial a DTMF telephone number either by keying in a series of key strokes or by pressing one user programmed key. One drawback of these devices is that they must either be programmed by the user before the device is capable of dialing or the user must discreetly dial the telephone number. A further drawback of these devices is that the user must go through a series of procedures after powering on in order to activate the dialing of a desired telephone number.
DTMF dialer devices disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,817,135 and 4,941,172 to Winebaum have addressed usage by the specialty advertising industry. These patents disclose a card-like object incorporating an automatic mechanism for dialing a single telephone number, such as the telephone number of a company distributing the card. The card-like object is intended to be distributed with mass media such as magazines, books, newspapers, direct mail advertising products and/or services, etc. The card-like object is constructed of stiff paper or cardboard or a plastic and encloses a tone generator circuit and an associated miniature battery and speaker or other sound transducer. The tone generator circuit includes a microprocessor, a read only memory (ROM), and a random access memory (RAM). The tone generator circuit is a DTMF generator which decodes a telephone number preprogrammed and stored in the ROM and generates a sequence of corresponding DTMF tones which are fed via an amplifier to the speaker.
To activate the tone generator circuit, a switch must be actuated by the opening of a flap of the card-like object or by a push button accessible through a hole in the card-like object. This mode of use can be awkward for many consumers and thus is a significant drawback to practical acceptance of this card by present and potential customers.
Consequently, a need exists for an improvement of dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) telephone number dialer devices so as to make them more user-friendly and thus of greater utility to users.